20 Dead In Guerrilla Violence Sunnis

Guerrillas abducted two Algerian diplomats on Thursday, in a continuing campaign to isolate the new elected government internationally.

All the Sunni members of the Constitution-drafting committee have suspended their membership in the committee and are boycotting its meetings. They protest that the clerical Shiite head of the committee, Humam Hamoudi, keeps giving interviews in which he maintains that the constitution will be ready by August 1, when in fact the Sunnis do not even accept that first sentence of the current draft, which enshrines the principle of federalism. They also demand an international investigation of the killing of 3 Sunni members of the committee on Tuesday (the Sunni Dialogue Council darkly hints that the Shiite-dominated government was behind the assassinations). (+ -al-Hayat).

On Thursday guerrillas killed 8 persons and wounded 16 on Thursday morning in various attacks. Five of those killed were Iraqi soldiers. (This total includes the Dora attack mentioned above). Guerrillas shot dead 3 members of the Iraqi Reconstruction Committee of Qadisiyah Province.

On Wednesday, guerrillas ambushed a police patrol in Mosul, killing seven policemen and wounding one. In another Mosul attack, guerrillas wounded a police lieutenant colonel and injured his driver.

‘ Soldiers have been moving earth to construct a trench and a berm around Tal Afar, forcing traffic to go through rather than around security checkpoints. U.S. Army engineers in Mosul have recently completed a 64-kilometer dirt berm around that city to stem the flow of insurgents and weapons. McMaster said he believes recent arrests in Tal Afar and at the Syrian border have significantly disrupted the insurgency’s ability to operate. But he said insurgents and foreign fighters in parts of the city are continuing to terrorize the population.’

I just very much doubt that building a wall around Tal Afar and forcing everyone to go through US checkpoints is going to make a dent in the guerrilla movement. One notes that last weeekend was rather bloody. And, an attack on Tal Afar, Fallujah-style, will just ensure that they hate us for decades to come.